Top 5 User Research Mistakes Early-Stage Teams Make

Stop Using Research to Confirm What You Already Believe

The single most common mistake early founders make when doing user research is conducting it to prove themselves right, not to discover the truth.

The Top 5 Traps

1. Leading questions: Asking "How happy would you be if you could use this feature?" instead of "How do you currently solve this problem?"
2. Interviewing friends and family: People who care about you will give encouraging answers — but they are rarely your target user.
3. Surface needs vs. underlying motivation (Jobs-to-be-done): Users who say they want a faster horse actually want to get somewhere faster.
4. Treating opinions as actions: Someone saying "I would definitely buy this" is very different from them handing you their credit card.
5. Flat, one-dimensional personas: Focusing only on age and income while ignoring mental state and triggering contexts.

The right tools can help you avoid every one of these traps — serving as an objective third-party advisor that keeps you honest and grounded.